Iran seeks 'phased actions' in nuclear talks

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's foreign minister is urging step-by-step compromises between his country and world powers to advance negotiations over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
Mohammad Javad Zarif's remarks on Iran's state TV referred to "phased actions" after reviving stalled talks with a six-nation group — the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other envoys are scheduled to meet with Zarif on Thursday in New York to discuss restarting the talks.
Zarif did not elaborate in his comments late Wednesday, but it is seen a reference to gradual removal of sanctions by the West in return for a gradual decrease in Iran's nuclear activities, possibly uranium enrichment.
The West fear Iran could eventually produce a nuclear weapon — a charge Iran denies.

SOURCE : http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/09/26/iran-seeks-phased-actions-in-nuclear-talks/2875031

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First computer made of carbon nanotubes is unveiled

The first computer built entirely with carbon nanotubes has been unveiled, opening the door to a new generation of digital devices.

"Cedric" is only a basic prototype but could be developed into a machine which is smaller, faster and more efficient than today's silicon models.
Nanotubes have long been touted as the heir to silicon's throne, but building a working computer has proven awkward.
The breakthrough by Stanford University engineers is published in Nature.
Cedric is the most complex carbon-based electronic system yet realised.
So is it fast? Not at all. It might have been in 1955.

The computer operates on just one bit of information, and can only count to 32.

"In human terms, Cedric can count on his hands and sort the alphabet. But he is, in the full sense of the word, a computer," says co-author Max Shulaker.
"There is no limit to the tasks it can perform, given enough memory".
In computing parlance, Cedric is "Turing complete". In principle, it could be used to solve any computational problem.
It runs a basic operating system which allows it to swap back and forth between two tasks - for instance, counting and sorting numbers.
And unlike previous carbon-based computers, Cedric gets the answer right every time.
Imperfection-immune "People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics, but there have been few demonstrations. Here is the proof," said Prof Subhasish Mitra, lead author on the study.
The Stanford team hopes their achievement will galvanise efforts to find a commercial successor to silicon chips, which could soon encounter their physical limits.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are hollow cylinders composed of a single sheet of carbon atoms.
They have exceptional properties which make them ideal as a semiconductor material for building transistors, the on-off switches at the heart of electronics.
For starters, CNTs are so thin - thousands could fit side-by-side in a human hair - that it takes very little energy to switch them off.
"Think of it as stepping on a garden hose. The thinner the pipe, the easier it is to shut off the flow," said HS Philip Wong, co-author on the study.

But while single-nanotube transistors have been around for 15 years, no-one had ever put the jigsaw pieces together to make a useful computing device.

So how did the Stanford team succeed where others failed? By overcoming two common bugbears which have bedevilled carbon computing.
First, CNTs do not grow in neat, parallel lines. "When you try and line them up on a wafer, you get a bowl of noodles," says Mitra.
The Stanford team built chips with CNTs which are 99.5% aligned - and designed a clever algorithm to bypass the remaining 0.5% which are askew.
They also eliminated a second type of imperfection - "metallic" CNTs - a small fraction of which always conduct electricity, instead of acting like semiconductors that can be switched off.
To expunge these rogue elements, the team switched off all the "good" CNTs, then pumped the remaining "bad" ones full of electricity - until they vaporised. The result is a functioning circuit.
The Stanford team call their two-pronged technique "imperfection-immune design". Its greatest trick? You don't even have to know where the imperfections lie - you just "zap" the whole thing.
Read More : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24232896

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Pakistan earthquake creates new island, 'mud volcano' to blame

Mud houses in the mountains crumbled as a 7.7-magnitude earthquake shook western Pakistan early on Tuesday. Meanwhile, on the coast, residents of Gwadar saw a solitary island rise from the sea.
Older residents of the coastal town said the land emergence was déjà vu — an earthquake in 1968 produced an island that stayed for one year and then vanished, Ali Mohammad, 60, and Azeem Baloch, 57, told NBC News.
Seismologists suspect the island is a temporary formation resulting from a "mud volcano," a jet of mud, sand and water that gushed to the surface as the temblor churned and pressurized that slurry under the ocean floor.
"Sandy layers underground are shaken, and sand grains jiggle and become more compact," John Armbruster, a seismologist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University told NBC News. The shifting sand layers are compacted and pressurize the water, which gushed upwards, carrying mud and sand along with it.
This "liquefaction" of sand and mud layers take place after any earthquake, but these sudden islands are usually spotted after strong earthquakes, at least 7- or 8-magnitude events. The distance of the island from the epicenter of the quake is "a little bit surprising," Armbruster said, granted that "the sediments are quite soft and susceptible to this."
Back in the 1940s, a sizable island rose from the sea in the area, but it didn't last long. After an earthquake near Karachi struck, the British Indian Geological survey recorded a new island "big enough that people could land a boat and walk on it," Armbruster said. "Within days, weeks" — he wasn't sure how long — "it washed away."
Researchers at the United States Geological Survey are investigating the new formation, Paul Earle, a USGS geophysicist told NBC News, but have yet to get independent confirmation of it.
It is clear that "the islands are not created because the ground was ... pushed up by the earthquake," he said, but more likely it was a secondary effect of shifting sediments. He also agrees the formation appears to have been caused by a mud volcano, but added that they don't need an earthquake to set them off. There are "mud volcanoes in Yellowstone that have not been triggered by earthquakes," he said.
While mud volcanoes are typical of watery, loose sediments layers off the coast of Baluchistan, more substantial instant islands — or "land uprisings" — do suddenly appear in other parts of the world, Stephan Graham, a geologist at Stanford University told NBC News.
They're typically seen along fault lines where one tectonic plate slides under another, like the hungry subduction zone under New Zealand. Fault lines like the San Andreas, at which the Pacific Plate and the North American plates slide past each other sideways, are less likely to see such upcrops, Graham said.
It also takes a pretty sizable earthquake to push up an entirely new land feature. "You wouldn't expect to see it in a 3- or 4-magnitude [quake]," Graham said, it would take a stronger temblor of 7 or 8 magnitude to change the landscape.

SOURCE : http://www.nbcnews.com/science/pakistan-earthquake-creates-new-island-mud-volcano-blame-4B11248003

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt has secret girlfriend, unsure about marriage

Psssst! Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a secret girlfriend.
But he's not saying who.
Gordon-Levitt, 32, who plays a porn-addicted young man in "Don Jon," which he also directed and wrote, spoke about his lady love on SiriusXM's "The Howard Stern Show" but he wouldn't reveal her name, just little morsels about who she is and why he's never talked about her before.
"I have a girlfriend but I tend not to really like to talk about it in public," the "Dark Knight Rises" star said. "She is not in show business."
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"I get up in movies and I play other people, so when the audience is watching me in movies, I don't want them thinking about me and who I'm dating, and blah blah blah," he told Stern. "I want them to see the character, the story that I'm telling, you know."
And apparently his girlfriend -- he refused to say how long they've been dating -- wants to stay out of the spotlight, too.
"The girl that I'm with, she really doesn't want to be a part of it and you can imagine not wanting to have that kind of scrutiny," he said.
Apparently the two met through "mutual friends" and when asked if he was in love, he shied away from the question.
"Oh, jeez, man! Come on! This is getting private."
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Speaking of privates (and other vices), the actor talks about making an "adult film" about a man who can't connect with other people and how it could have been somewhat "autobiographical." (At least that's what Stern wanted it to be.)
The idea came about in 2008 and he finished the script while shooting "The Dark Knight Rises" and said he "was stoned" when he first thought of it as a comedy. (He also admitted he tried cocaine a few times but didn't like it, but liked LSD and didn't really do any other hard drugs. Then he made sure he made a PSA about being careful when doing drugs.)
"The first ideas of a Don Juan type of character -- watches too much pornography -- and a princess type of character, who watches too many romantic comedies," he said. "He likes the 'one-way thing,' he doesn't actually want to deal with a person, another human being."
The film also stars Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore and Tony Danza.
But in Gordon-Levitt's real life, he's "quick to run" in long-term relationships, Stern said.
"I think I'm a pretty good person and a good boyfriend. Yeah, I just wouldn't want to be with someone who was disrespectful to me."
When he was asked if he could be married and stay faithful, Gordon-Levitt waffled and said he didn't know if it was or wasn't for him.
"I think that I could partner up with somebody -- I don't know who that somebody is -- I could partner up with a woman and commit to we're going to raise a family and that's a project we're going to commit to for 20-something years."
He said he could be capable of being sexually monogamous during that time, but also said things may change after the kids are grown up.
"I like to not be too committed to any one future that's really far away, necessarily, unless there's a reason, which is why I'm saying if you're gonna raise a family ... I can make that commitment."
The film is in wide release Friday.

SOURCE : http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-et-mg-joseph-gordon-levitt-girlfriend-don-jon-20130925,0,394905.story

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UPDATE 1-Joint U.S.-Russian crew reaches space station

(Recasts with crew's arrival at space station)
* Soyuzcapsule reaches station in less than six hours
* Crew to join three already living aboard space station
* Next crew will bring Olympic torch but won't light it
By Irene Klotz
Sept 25 (Reuters) - - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station.
The Soyuz rocket and capsule lifted off at 4:58 p.m. EDT (2058 GMT) on an express route to the station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.
Less than six hours after liftoff, veteran Russian commander Oleg Kotov and rookies Sergey Ryazanskiy of Russia and Michael Hopkins of the United States reached the outpost, a $100 billion project of 15 nations. Only two other crews have made the journey as quickly. Previous Soyuz capsules took two days of orbital maneuvers to reach the station.
The arrival of Kotov, Ryazanskiy and Hopkins returns the station to its full, six-member live-aboard crew. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano have been running the station on their own since Sept. 10.
The skeleton crew was to have overseen the arrival of a commercial cargo ship on a test flight to the station this week.
But a software problem left the unmanned Cygnus freighter unable to receive navigation data properly from the station, delaying its arrival until no earlier than Saturday to avoid conflicting with the Soyuz's berthing. Typically, at least 48 hours are needed between spacecraft dockings.
The cargo ship, built and launched by Orbital Sciences with backing from NASA, blasted off aboard an Antares rocket on Sept. 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast.
"As a crew we're very excited to be up there when Cygnus rendezvous and docks and (we're) looking forward to opening that hatch," Hopkins said on Tuesday during a prelaunch press conference.
Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are making their first flights. Kotov, who will take over command of the station when Yurchikhin leaves in November, has made two previous long-duration missions on the station.
During their five-month stay, Kotov and Ryazanskiy are scheduled to make three spacewalks, the first of which will include taking an unlighted Olympic torch outside the airlock to promote the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia, which open in February 2014.
"Our goal here is to make it look spectacular," Kotov, speaking through a translator, told reporters.
"We'd like to showcase our Olympic torch in space. We will try to do it in a beautiful manner. Millions of people will see it live on TV and they will see the station and see how we work," Kotov said.

Read more :  http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/09/26/space-station-launch-idINL2N0HM04Z20130926

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House Republicans explore strategy to avoid federal government shutdown

With federal agencies set to close their doors in five days, House Republicans began exploring a potential detour on the path to a shutdown: shifting the fight over President Obama’s health-care law to a separate bill that would raise the nation's debt limit.
If it works, the strategy could clear the way for the House to approve a simple measure to keep the government open into the new fiscal year, which will begin Tuesday, without hotly contested provisions to defund the Affordable Care Act.

But it would set the stage for an even more nerve-racking deadline on Oct. 17, with conservatives using the threat of the nation’s first default on its debt to force the president to accept a one-year delay of the health-care law’s mandates, taxes and benefits.
Obama administration officials dismissed the plan, vowing that there would be no delay of the insurance initiative, which is set to begin enrolling consumers Tuesday. They argued that Republicans risk destroying their own credibility among voters, who strongly disapprove of such brinkmanship regardless of their views on the Affordable Care Act.
“Once you start saying ‘delay’ with something as damaging as the default of the United States, people hear the second part: They hear the default,” said White House strategist David Simas, speaking at a breakfast held by Third Way, a moderate Democratic group.
GOP leaders met for nearly 90 minutes Wednesday afternoon to discuss the strategy, which they plan to present to rank-and-file lawmakers Thursday morning. If it wins approval, the leaders hope to introduce the debt-limit bill Thursday and hold a vote as soon as Saturday — letting GOP lawmakers mount a fresh assault on the health-care law before deciding whether to shut down the government.
The debt-limit bill will be loaded with dozens of other conservative priorities, including the approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the abolition of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Rep. Steve Southerland (Fla.), who attended the meeting on behalf of the massive class of GOP lawmakers elected in 2010, sidestepped questions about whether conservatives would be willing to trade the leverage of a government shutdown for the leverage of a default.
Leaders are “running the traps on every conceivable formula,” he said. “We’re looking at every possibility.”
The strategizing in the House came as Senate Democrats advanced a slow but inevitable campaign to approve a measure to keep the government open without undermining the president’s most significant legislative achievement, commonly known as Obamacare.
After conservative Rep. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) staged a 21-hour attack on the law, he joined all 99 of his Senate colleagues Wednesday in voting to end his filibuster and start debating a House-passed bill that would fund the government through Dec. 15.
As written, that measure also would defund Obamacare. But after a long debate expected to stretch into the weekend, Senate rules permit Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to strip out the anti-Obamacare provisions, change the expiration date on the funding bill to Nov. 15, and pass the measure with a simple majority achieved entirely with Democratic votes.

 

SOURCE : http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/house-republicans-explore-strategy-to-avoid-federal-government-shutdown/2013/09/25/80c9d576-2618-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html

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The Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole Erupted Two Million Years Ago

Like most galaxies, the Milky Way has a supermassive black hole in its center. For the most part, however, that black hole is dormant – meaning that it isn’t emitting large amounts of radiation. That’s because that radition, in the form of X-rays, gamma rays, radio waves, is emitted when large objects – like giant gas clouds or stars – are brought into the black hole’s gravitational field. Matter falling into the black hole is subjected to exceedingly large gravitational forces, and the result is a blaze of light and radiation that is very visible to telescopes.
However, a team of scientists has uncovered evidence that two million years ago – when humanity’s earliest ancestors newly stepped on the world – the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, erupted in an explosion of high-energy radiation called a “Seyfert flare.” During that time, the radiation from the black hole was about 100 million times more powerful than it is today. Our ancestors may have even see the huge burst of light themselves, but this was hundreds of thousands of years before any kind of human was taking notes.
Astronomers have seen signs that there was such a Seyfert flare for the past few years, in the form of antimatter radiation and other clues. However, this new research enables astronomers to closely date when that explosion could have happened.
The key the astronomers found was actually discovered 20 years old, in the form of a strange glow that astronomers had noticed in the Magellanic Stream. The Magellanic Stream is composed of large clouds of gas – mostly hydrogen – that stretch for light years in the wake of the Milky Way’s two companion Galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The Stream is about 2 billion years old.
“We didn’t understand the cause. Then suddenly we realised it must be the mark, the fossil record, of a huge outburst of energy from the centre of our Galaxy,” remarked researcher Joss Bland-Hawthorn in a press release.
As the radiation traveled from the explosion at the heart of our galaxy, it eventually hit the Magellanic Stream, where the high energy hitting the gas clouds caused them to light up, the same way cosmic radiation causes auroras here on Earth.
Having arrived at that thought, the astronomers then crunched the numbers, using complicated geometries to figure out the direction of a potential eruption. Then they determined how long it would take the radiation to get to the Magellanic Stream, then how long it would take for the light from that explosion to then be visible here on Earth. Based on those calculations, the eruption most likely occurred about 2 million years ago.
The team also considered a number of other alternative sources for the glow, and found that they were far less likely due to the amount of energies involved. Additionally, these findings are consistent with the other signs of an eruption of Sagittarius A* that have been discovered in recent years.
“All this points to a huge explosion at the centre of our Galaxy,” said researcher Philip Maloney.

Read more : http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/09/25/the-milky-ways-supermassive-black-hole-erupted-two-million-years-ago

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